The process of clearing our newly acquired land was far beyond what we could do ourselves. It’s one thing to learn how to build a cabin, but we figured we’d skip the crash course in tree falling, bulldozing, digging etc. There are so many skills and equipment needed for this. We were happy that we could leave the land in capable hands.

Just after the clearing started, I dropped Jelger off in Horsefly with our friends. He would do some local work, while I went back to Vancouver for work for about 4 weeks. I eagerly awaited his cellphone photo updates. But because he was so busy working and didn’t have a car (he had to borrow one to go check) the updates were sparse.

Leonard Teppema and his team knew exactly what to do. And the two of us learned a lot of things we had no idea about. The driveway for example needed a culvert, which has certain legal requirements. And you need a permit to connect your driveway to the road. They took care of all of that for us.

To initially access the land, we lucked out. The only accessible space (a bit like a ramp into the forest from the street), was just outside our boundaries and belongs to the neighbours across the street. We were grateful they approved of the machines driving there, because otherwise we’d have needed pricey permits to have people on the road controlling traffic.

I’m also very impressed with the clean way Leonard stacked the rocks and cleaned everything up. Things went from looking like a tornado went through, to absolutely meticulous. By the time I picked Jelger up in early November, everything was ready for the winter.

As you can see in the photo above, there’s quite a bit of extra sand on the left part of the driveway. Something we didn’t even think about is that when you dig out a flat area from a hill, all that sand needs to go somewhere. So there are two areas that were previously lower, that are now filled up with sand.

We’re also happy that the team remembered not to forget about our well location marker! We put a piece of rebar in the ground to remember it. It was hard to even recognize the before and after locations!

Picking up Jelger in November and heading back to Vancouver, would be our last time seeing the land for a while. We started scheming and thinking of plans on what to build and do in the spring. But that’s for my next post. 🙂

Tanja

Video of the land clearing

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